Sliding Doors Shut Quickly on A Good Concept

By Vladimir V. ZelevinskyStaff Reporter

Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, John Lynch, John Hannah, Jeanne
Tripplehorn

Written and directed by Peter Howitt

Five years ago, a small movie called Groundhog Day came out of
nowhere and proved to be surprisingly good. In the era of high-concept
movies ("Aliens try to conquer earth," "Arnold Schwarzenegger is pregnant,"
"Robin Williams in drag," etc.), the story of a man stuck in time and
forced to re-experience one day over and over again was turned into a
wonderful film, with humor, romance, and a healthy dose of
thought-provoking subtext. A couple of years later, the same
writer/director team made another movie - Multiplicity. Seemingly
cut from the same cloth as Groundhog Day, this second movie proved
to be a disappointment - not as funny, not as charming, mostly perfunctory
in its appeal, mostly sitcom-ish (if such an adjective exists) in its
jokes, and largely pointless.

All this has a direct bearing on Sliding Doors. This one seems to
go for the same feel as Groundhog Day - a high-concept that puts a
spin on the reality, done as a frothy romantic comedy, with a layer of
serious subtext. Unfortunately, the result, while quite appealing for most
of its running time, is ultimately quite forgettable.

A young public relations executive, Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow, with a
pitch-perfect British accent), rushes to make a subway train, but a little
girl steps in her way. Helen loses one second, and the sliding doors close.
Or: What if a girl doesn't get in her way, and Helen makes the train? And
the twist - which I'm very much tempted to call a gimmick - is that the
movie follows both plot lines, switching back and forth between
the-Helen-that-made-the-train and the-Helen-that-didn't.

From the moment when the plot lines split, they start diverging. In one,
Helen meets a nice guy on the train, gets home early, and catches her
boyfriend with his mistress. In the other one, she is late, and nothing
happens when she gets home.

The idea of minor circumstances tremendously impacting our lives is a
great one, and the film manages to work a good deal of entertainment out of
it. First-time writer/director Peter Howitt obviously has a lot of fun
cross-cutting between the parallel stories, and he displays a great deal of
deftness making clear to which story each moment belongs (at first, one
Helen gets a bandage to distinguish her from the other one; later, they
have different haircuts).

For about half of its running time, Sliding Doors is very
welcome. Then it looses its spark. The novelty of following two stories at
the same time wears off, and several things become painfully obvious. One
of them is that neither of these two stories is interesting by itself. One
Helen is trying to put her life together after discovering her boyfriend
was cheating on her; another just mopes around, glumly suspecting
something's wrong. Both of these plots are obvious and somewhat boring.
Some sparks fly between Helen and James, the nice guy she meets on the
train (John Hannah, from Four Weddings and a Funeral), but even this
storyline soon loses any appeal, when it becomes clear that James is a very
shallow character (not by the screenwriter's design), and all his charm
comes from him quoting Monty Python - and not even different jokes, but one
and the same, over and over again. When the running gag of a comedy is a
borrowed quotation, it's sad indeed.

Despite this, the whole mood of romantic comedy still works quite well -
the dialogue is well written (although it has way too many pop-culture
references, ranging from aforementioned Monty Python to Seinfeld to
Elton John), and the direction and acting are generally sharp. However,
during the last ten minutes, Sliding Doors makes an attempt to turn
into a serious drama, and this just destroys it. All of the whimsical mood
is lost, and the drama by itself is not convincing enough (since it is
caused by several lamely obvious plot devices).

After all is said and done, the thing that works best in Sliding
Doors is its high-concept. While certainly interesting to follow, it's
definitely not enough to make a mediocre movie into a good one. Go rent
Groundhog Day instead - it works not only as a high-concept movie,
but as a good movie as well.